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I have just returned from vacation. Other than some “Words with Friends”, it was pretty much tech-free. Now I am ready to dive into the new year.

I missed a great #langchat while I was gone. If you are a World Language teacher, you should get involved in our Twitter chats. They are Thursday nights at 8pm. A moderator shares the topic for the night and guides us in that topic. They do a great job. At the bottom of this post I will share my tricks for participating in a Twitter chat.

The topic I missed last week was “Greeting and Getting to Know One Another”.

The first week is a challenge for me. I have mentioned that there is not much content that happens and not much Spanish speaking in my blog post “Flipping the First Week of School”. Nonetheless, it is an important time for establishing connections and procedures.

Here is the link to the 2012 #langchats. There are some great topics.
Here are some of my favorites posts from the “Greeting and Getting to Know One Another” chat:

* @dr_dmd and @ZJonesSpanish both like to put music on in the classroom and greets their students at the door with a handshake and a smile.
*@dr_dmd likes using an activity he calls “Hand it to You” where he has students draw an outline of their hands and write one piece of information on each of the fingers. Students then pair up to interview each other before passing their hand tracing to next person. At the end of the exercise, all the hands are collected and displayed together as a “quilt.” As @dr_dmd put it, the beginning of the year is the time to establish a culture of community and collaboration in the classroom. Hmmm…. maybe this would be a way to share what life’s principles we excel in….*@Marishawkins and @tonitheisen talked about making Facebook and Twitter-themed bulletin boards on which students can “post” and “tweet” – both fun and relatable for their generation!*@Elisabeth13 always shows her students a funny target language commercial or video at the end of the first day of class; she wants them to leave laughing.(This is one of my favorites)*@SECottrell polls her advanced students to find out what they are interested in doing and learning so that she can tailor assessments to their motivation.*@Musicuentos suggested an activity to familiarize students with proficiency levels and to help students gauge their own. A description of the activity can be found here:http://t.co/PXj4ieor If students understand proficiency levels, they will better understand teacher expectations. As @tmsaue1 reminded us, teachers can take the secrecy out of language learning starting day 1!

I hope if you have already started school, that it is going well. Michigan has a state law that prohibits school from starting before Labor Day. I will need every day left to get ready.

If you have never participated in a Twitter chat, there are some tricks I have found:1. Open up the site “Tweet Chat“. Type in the hashtag you would like to follow (#langchat). You will do your posting there. Tweet Chat automatically adds the hashtag for you. If you do not use Tweet Chat, you will have to remember to add it.2. When someone shares a link, do one of two things. Either mark it as a favorite so you can check it out later; or right click on the link and open it. You will miss a lot of posts in the chat if you look at it too long, so check it out later. Leave it open in a new tab.3. Make sure you favorite posts you want to come back to.4. Follow people who share great ideas. You can always unfollow them later.
5. Participate! Ask questions and share your ideas.

Twitter is one of the best PLNs anywhere. I hope if you haven’t been involved with the chats that you will begin.

Like this:

World Language teachers definitely know the importance and value of learning another language. Sometimes our love of the subject is not enough to express that importance to others. Here are some of my favorite resources to help talk to administrators, community members, parents and students. At the bottom I linked my favorite You Tube videos that are high interest to students.

You Tube Videos: Why Learn a Language. These are very short and good when there are a few minutes left in class. Berlitz has many great videos. Be sure to preview them first, some are inappropriate (not these ones):

Like this:

We use You Tube frequently in World Languages, it is a great resource!

Before sharing, I would like to stress that you save your videos in playlists. Also, use descriptive names for your playlists so you can find the videos you want again easily.

I ALWAYS use You Tube videos for reflexive verbs. Once the students have individual flashcards made, we watch “Morning routine” and “Bedtime routine” videos. They put their flashcards in order of what they see. **Watch the videos ahead of time and pick your favorites (short & vocab packed).

Right now we are learning the “Qué Llueva” song by projecting the video with lyrics and singing it. It is “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” in Spanish.

Another type of You Tube videos that was discussed during Twitter #langchat for class use are videos without words. Great for dubbing and speaking practice. This playlist was given during our chat: Animations sans Mots

The Vancouver Film School channel has some great short videos that you can use for dubbing as well. Make sure you are in the “Videos” tab, then click on Playlists. Just turn down the sound… I heard this through #langchat, too. It’s like online PD! 🙂

To have students dub, I use Voice Thread. This is quite a project but it can easily be done. Upload a video to Voice Thread. Maybe one with no words, or one with cultural aspects. The students will prepare their script. They use a voice recorder like “Sound Recorder” (in Accessories portion of Programs menu), Audacity, Garage Band, etc. to record their work as they are watching the video. The timing takes a little practice and you need to reassure them that it will not be perfect. They upload the audio clip to the video and it is finished. It saves a lot of time if you only have a few videos for them to choose from. It also makes sure they are using a video of a current vocabulary topic.

I have not browsed extensively, but there are some great channels for use in World Language. Here are a couple that I know if. Again, make sure you are in the “Videos” tab, then click on Playlists to see them by category.Spanish TogetherSeñor Jordan

If you have some favorites, I would love to hear about them!

Tube Chop allows you to easily “chop” a portion of a You Tube video. Just use what you need! A great tool for those videos that have good stuff but are just too long.

These are sites where you paste in the URL of the You Tube video you want to download to a flashdrive for later use. Possibly to show in class without the ads or to upload it to a wiki/web page/ Power Point. There is no program to download, just pick a format for your end video: Keep TubeDownload Tube Save Tube Keep Vid

Quiet Tube is a site where you can drag a bookmarklet to your links menu, then for “supported” videos you can click the bookmarklet and eliminate the ads, etc.

Alternatives to You Tube, perhaps because You Tube is blocked in your school or because some of these sites categorize videos: